The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Joseph M. Stoddart, 5 December 1890
Date: December 5, 1890
Whitman Archive ID: yal.00255
Source: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Ryan Furlong, Amanda J. Axley, Marie Ernster, and Stephanie Blalock
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Camden
Dec: 5 '90
My dear JMS
I like y'r plan & feel greatly complimented by it & hope it will be carried out forthwith say in the February number.1 Of course I will do whatever I can—remember what I said ab't the printerial proportion & look. Send me soon a printed slip of the pieces you have, so I can make a nice flush page.
I send you herewith the MS of personal article (must not have my name signed) Of course if you print it send me good proof—The price w'd be $20 & I reserve the right to print in future book if I wish & shall want 25 numbers of the Mag:
Personal to J M S2
Correspondent:
Joseph Marshall Stoddart
(1845–1921) published Stoddart's Encyclopaedia
America, established Stoddart's Review in 1880,
which was merged with The American in 1882, and became
the editor of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1886. On
January 11, 1882, Whitman received an
invitation from Stoddart through J. E. Wainer, one of his associates, to dine
with Oscar Wilde on January 14 (Clara Barrus, Whitman and
Burroughs—Comrades [Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931],
235n).
Notes:
1. Stoddart had written to Whitman on October 10, 1890, about publishing a Whitman page in a future issue of Lippincott's. The March 1891 issue of the magazine (376–389) contained Whitman's portrait as a frontispiece, "Old Age Echoes" (including "Sounds of Winter," "The Unexpress'd," "Sail Out for Good, Eidólon Yacht!" and "After the Argument"), Whitman's "Some Personal and Old-Age Memoranda," Horace Traubel's "Walt Whitman: Poet and Philosopher and Man," and "The Old Man Himself. A Postscript." [back]
2. This letter is endorsed by Whitman on the verso: Personal to J M S. [back]